Blanket or Hope Chest

This is an African Cherry (Makore) Hope / Blanket chest lined with 5/16” thick Tongue & Groove Aromatic Cedar closet liner. Plans came from Woodcraft #FD-162 item #151551. Makore was purchased from now closed exotic lumber dealer in N.E. Alabama. Closet liner came from Homer Depot. Hardware came from Rockler and Woodworkers Hardware. 3/8” Brass rod and 1/16” x 1/2” PSA White felt came from McMaster-Carr. The 2” Casters came from HF. Two coats of Homer Formby’s Gloss Tung oil finish were applied.

The Makore started out as two 8/4×18” x 7’ rough slabs. We created a cut list of all parts and grouped them by thickness, width and length. This helped in determining where to cut the 8/4 slabs and have manageable sizes. The slabs then were cut to width and length depending on chalk part layout on each board.

Keep in mind this was 8/4 stock and we intended to resaw and obtain two 3/4” thick boards from each piece of 8/4. Since we would lose our chalk outlines during the planing process we sketched the part layout of each board and color coded the sketch then painted the end of each board a color corresponding to the sketch.

After jointing and surfacing (S3S) to a hit and miss thickness were 85+% of the 8/4 was planed smooth we used our 17” 5HP bandsaw with a power feeder, a Lenox Carbide Resaw Blade and a Lenox tension gauge to split the 8/4 boards. We ended up with 15/16” to 17/16” thick boards.

Once the boards were resawed we fed them through our widebelt sander starting with 60 grit and progressing to 150 grit and a final thickness of 3/4”.

Finally we had our wood ready to cut, shape, join, groove, and mortise all the parts. We used heated hide glue to join all the parts.

The raised panels pieces were joined with lemon biscuits and were slightly oversized to allow squaring each panel prior to feeding the panels through the shaper.

The aromatic cedar closet lining was attached to the top with hide glue and composite nails then weights were applied for 24 hours. The mortise joints were glued but brass rod was used to lock the tenon and mortise joints and also used as a decorative design feature.

Since this was for my niece we lasered her name on the underside of the lid into a section of the aromatic cedar.

-- Wuddoc